It Ended Up Being Bosh, Not LeBron or Wade, Who Called The Shots

The anticipation for July 1 and the NBA free agent frenzy was dominated by two names. LeBron James and Dwayne Wade were two franchise type players to build a team around, while Chris Bosh was a distant third in everyone’s book. Yet it was the former Raptor who set the pace where nearly every other free agent landed.

No matter how much it hurts the residents of Cleveland, ‘The King’ was ready to return if he could have convinced Bosh to come to town. The Cavalier organization was already going through changes with the firing of head coach Mike Brown and the hiring of Byron Scott. If Bosh shunned James’ invitation to take the same offer from Wade to come to South Beach, then that speaks volumes about the state of the organization.

Bosh apparently did not see the same upside in Cleveland as he did in Miami and you can even take it a step further by making an assumption that he felt Wade was a better teammate than James. There was no guarantee that James would join them with the Heat when Bosh agreed to sign.

Speaking of that, Bosh deciding on Miami played a big part in Wade not signing with his hometown Bulls. The Chicago native was torn apart by not coming home, but ultimately chose to stay in Florida once Bosh told him his intentions.

Weighing his options, James had to see the grass greener on the southern side of the street. Without Bosh, Cleveland did not look as rosy. And although the Knicks signed Amar’e Stoudemire to a five-year, $100-million contract trying to lure him, James must have felt that New York was still years away from contending for a championship. Chicago? Perhaps if Wade had signed there, but James would still have been playing in Michael Jordan’s shadow forever.

When it was all said and done, James choosing Miami should not have come as a surprise, and it didn’t if you read our article posted earlier in the day of “The Decision.” What did cause some shock is that it was Bosh, and not James, who played the biggest part in free agency.